E-Commerce Development with ColdFusion:
Conference, February 12-13, 2000

Have you heard the expression, changing a business from "brick and mortar" to "click and mortar"? Adam Churvis of Productivity Enhancements Inc., speaker at the ColdFusion E-Commerce conference on February 12 and February 13, introduced these terms early in the excellent two-day engagement. The speaker was an apt choice, as his company is the publisher of the Database Blocks ColdFusion development tool. The Conference, sponsored by TeraTech, Inc., CPCUG and MDCFUG user groups, and organized by TeraTech's Michael Smith, was held at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

On the first day of the conference, Churvis covered E-Commerce with information, code sharing, humor, hints, and occasional personal hobby horses that made the day go quickly and left us all wanting more. He won me over when he asserted that it is more important to have the table designed correctly than to have the query designed correctly, which is an argument I have had several times with my boss. Design was a major theme of the first day; understanding the business, determining the needs of the users, translating this into functional requirements and a development plan-all of these issues were related to the power and promise of ColdFusion.

Churvis's introduction to E-Commerce was provocative and intriguing. According to Churvis, doing business by electronic means will enable communication, increase efficiency, bring down prices through competition, and increase automation. One of the benefits of automation, aside from the usual savings of time and money, is the avoidance of people who don't care and/or are incompetent. Electronic business does, however, carry the added responsibility of having sites with good customer service. Churvis suggests that the site must have "a good people touch."

Throughout the conference, there were invaluable suggestions, evaluations of software and technology, and pithy statements that helped crystallize Churvis's ideas. After an excellent brief discussion on protecting the merchant from fraud, he remarked, "If you can't afford to lose anything, you can't afford to be in business." In the areas where I am the most knowledgeable, I found myself very impressed with his insight and thoroughness-and not merely because he agreed with me! His suggestions on mapping current practices, including the tools to use, the process, and the timing, had the ring of experience hard won.

The second day of the conference was very well-attended, a tribute to the value the participants received on day one. The discussion on scalability, in and of itself, was worth coming for. In this segment of the conference, Churvis offered strategies for making your logic better and your system more efficient. He presented an Architecture Deployment Chart to analyze the logic of a project, which included what programming tools should be used to meet the objectives along a project timeline. This discussion dealt with general methods, rather than specific products or tools. At times during the conference Churvis did recommend and/or demonstrate specific tools--but he did not use conference time to push his company's products. Ideas he discussed include:

• "Partition logic where it belongs, minimize traffic between logic components."
• "Design business rules into the data level to protect your data."
• "Don't manipulate data in JavaScript, but validate in the browser--taking the burden off the server."
• "Don't use hardware to make up for poor coding--anything not optimized is slop."
• "Use controlled redundancy to save calls to the database."

One of the most heartening aspects of the conference was Churvis's offer to share code, help others with code, and welcome us back for subsequent conferences. His patience with questions and obvious satisfaction in helping others are the hallmarks of a mature professional; more than attending a conference, it felt like I was obtaining a mentor.

The conference appealed to both experienced and new users of ColdFusion. Matthew D. Schuster has been the webmaster for the Office of Thrift Supervision for three years. The goal of his site is to provide information to the public and to the industry. Schuster observed that the ideas and tools of E-Commerce as presented in the conference are applicable to his site, even though his business is not an e-commerce venture. He said, "We may not make a profit, but most of the rules still apply. Over 65% of our users are returning to the site, it is important that we please them, and that our information is up to date." The E-Commerce conference is directly applicable, as Matthew is considering adding a shopping cart so that users can choose documents more conveniently. (Schuster also runs a ColdFusion help site, cfanswers.com, where new and experienced ColdFusion users are welcome.)

On Wednesday of this week, just three days before the conference, Kevin Langevin heard about the conference in his new subscription to CF-Talk. He picked up the phone and called Price Line for a ticket from Florida to Maryland, and as of Saturday evening, he was very glad he came. Langevin is coming into Web design from 6 years as a test engineer, and has an emerging career as an entrepreneur. The web designer for his business portal recommended ColdFusion as faster and less expensive than development using ASP. As a conscientious supervisor, Langevin was beginning to investigate ColdFusion and E-Commerce; the conference was the perfect topic at the perfect time. Nor is he disenchanted by the packed content; "It's great; I wish I knew more of the technologies. My next week will be spent on research based on the questions and content of the conference." Especially important to him are the questions that were raised by Churvis regarding security. Langevin won a prize for being the person who traveled the furthest to get to the conference.

There were a few problems, which will probably be worked out as Churvis takes the conference on the road. One was the code itself-although very well commented, it was hard to follow as he scrolled up and down. More printouts or more linear scrolling might have helped. The code will be available to conference attendees.

Also, the conference has too much information to be covered in two days. One solution might be to query the attendees at the beginning of the conference as to their areas of primary interest and adapt the conference accordingly. Another solution would be to have a beginner and an advanced conference, or have a third day aimed at developers for SQL Server, since much of that part of the conference was not as applicable to those of us still working in Access. Although Churvis did an excellent job of presenting material of interest to people with different backgrounds, some of the material could not be covered. One might wonder if he would choose differently if content was decided before the session rather than on the hoof.

Looking at my notes on the conference, I find many substantive topics that I could summarize, but then you might think that I had covered the same material--a poor substitute for the real thing. No matter what your ColdFusion skill level is, if you had attended this conference, you would have left both more knowledgeable and full of questions. A definite "must attend" for anyone interested in helping businesses into the electronic age.

Churvis is already planning further conferences set in other locations. Next up is Birmingham, Alabama on Thursday March 9 through Friday March 10. This one will be free, completely sponsored by InTellitech. Another conference will be held in April, to be announced shortly. CFSeminar.com will be available in the beginning of March, for all registration and management information. For more information, you can contact Adam Churvis at info@commerceblocks.com or call 770-446-8866.

Churvis notes that two days are just not enough. Therefore, his organization plans to extend future conferences to three days. Currently, they are planning to charge a registration fee of $195 for such three-day seminars. Sounds like a lot, but this will include 300-500 pages of supporting materials, including all code AND one website license for ShopBlock, Product Enhancement's new product. Churvis says, "We're not stressing sales, but technology — giving our product away to the registrants so they can get out there and use it!"

Thank you to TeraTech, MDCFUG, CPCUG, and of course to Adam Churvis, for an enjoyable and informative conference!

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